Pat McIntosh: The Rough Collier

It was as if the skull had gone from inside the skin, he decided, prodding again at the leathery scalp. And beneath it — he felt carefully at the hollows his fingers had left already. Beneath it the brains had turned to something which felt very like butter. Why would that happen? And why should the skull-bones vanish and the bones of the face remain?

Abandoning these questions for later, he explored the rest of the scalp, parting the harsh bright hair and brushing flakes of peat and strands of moss away from the skin. On the crown of the head, rather to the right side, the skin was split and drawn back, and the yellowish stuff visible within the wound did resemble butter. The whole corpse smelled of the peat it so much resembled, but here it was underlaid, very faintly, by another scent like old cheese. Peering closely at the gash in the scalp, he decided that its edges were slightly thickened, as if this injury had happened before death.

‘This is not a working man,’ said Alys. He looked up, to find her studying the corpse’s hands where they were tucked against its chest. ‘See, there are no calluses on his fingers, as the collier said, and his fingernails are neatly trimmed. And his feet — ’ She gestured with the brush she was using. ‘He has no shoes on, but his feet are as soft as his hands. He has gone well shod.’

‘There’s none of the gentry missing,’ said Henry. ‘And none wi’ that hair hereabouts anyway. He’s maybe a traveller of some kind, lost on the moss, Maister Gil.’

‘We should be making notes,’ said Gil.

‘I left my tablets in our chamber,’ said Alys. He laid the cloth she had brought across the distorted face, drew his own set of tablets from his purse, and passed them over when she held out her hand.

‘Use Scots,’ he requested, ‘so I don’t have to translate if it’s needed for evidence.’

She found a clean leaf and noted her own findings, and he summarized his for her.

‘You think he has been struck on the head?’ she asked as he finished.

‘It looks very like,’ he admitted.

‘Lost on the moss and attacked,’ offered Henry, who had listened with interest.

‘And his throat cut as well,’ said Alys.

‘Someone wanted to be certain,’ said Henry.

‘No further wounds on the scalp. He’s got all his front teeth, though they’re loose in the jaw now,’ Gil noted in passing, and Alys wrote this down. ‘And his throat has been cut.’ He eased at the displaced jaw, to scrutinize the leathery recesses under it. ‘On the left side, from under the ear to the windpipe. No sign of maggots or flies.’

‘On the left only?’ said Alys, looking up.

‘From in front, maybe,’ suggested Henry doubtfully.

‘You don’t cut a man’s throat from the front,’ said Gil. ‘Not unless you want to be drenched in blood.’

‘Like a pig-killing,’ agreed Alys, nodding. ‘So it would have been a right-handed man who killed him, standing behind him?’

‘I’d say so, and the blow to the head was right-handed as well.’ Gil peered further into the hollow under the jaw, and identified something fibrous wedged in a fold of the skin. ‘What’s this?’ He poked with one finger, but could get no purchase on the strand. ‘Alys, have you a hook or a key or something about you?’

Searching in her purse in her turn, she handed him a buttonhook. Even with this it took him some time to get a purchase on what he had seen, so embedded in the flesh was it, but finally it lodged in the curve of the little implement and he was able to coax it out.

‘A cord,’ said Alys.

‘A cord,’ Gil agreed, returning the buttonhook. He took the free end in his fingers, and it came away in his grasp. ‘It’s near rotted to dust, but I think this may be what’s killed him. He’s been throttled. Here at the back of his neck where the flesh is so shrunk you can’t see any trace of it, I suppose the cord must have crumbled away, but under his jaw it had sunk so deep it was protected from the bog-waters. If his throat was slit after he was dead, the blood would drain more slowly.’

‘They were really makin’ certain,’ said Henry, much impressed. ‘That’s three ways they slain him — cracked him on the head, throttled him wi’ a rope, and slit his throat,’ he counted off on his fingers. ‘I’d no go so far to put down a horse, save he was a right brute.’

‘But when?’ Gil wondered. ‘When has this happened? Is there any tale of someone going missing on the moor?’

‘No that I mind,’ said Henry, ‘nor that I ever heard tell. You’d maybe want to ask some of the old folk,’ he added, ‘they’ve little enough to do but talk over what’s past.’

‘No need of that, surely,’ expostulated Fleming almost in Gil’s ear, and he realized that the man had ceased his prayers and had been drawing closer for some time, exclaiming indignantly at what was being said. ‘It’s the man Murray, for certain, and everything you’re saying makes it clearer what the witch has been at! Draining his blood after he was dead, and the like, Our Lady protect us from such wickedness. And what did she plan wi’ his blood, Maister Cunningham, tell me that!’

‘I’ve no idea,’ said Gil politely. ‘I’ve not studied witchcraft, Sir David. It seems you have.’

‘It isny Thomas Murray, Sir David,’ said Wat Paton beyond the priest, ‘Jamesie Meikle was quite clear on it.’

‘I have to protect my flock, maister,’ protested Fleming, ignoring this. Across the stable-yard there was a disturbance, as the crowd outside the yett parted reluctantly to allow someone through. Hooves clopped on the cobbles. ‘I’ve never studied it close, I only ken what anyone kens!’

‘Aye, I’ve heard a few tales about that,’ said Henry, with humour.

‘Gil,’ said Alys, putting a hand on his sleeve. ‘Is that not Michael Douglas at the yett?’

Just inside the iron-bound leaves a slight young man was dismounting from a tired horse, a groom in blue-grey livery already afoot to take his reins. The newcomer wore the narrow blue belted gown of a student of the University of Glasgow, and untrimmed mouse-coloured hair stuck out below his scholar’s cap. Fleming hurried forward with more exclamations, brushing the peat-cutters aside and reaching his master’s youngest son just before the Belstane steward, to bow and flourish his felt hat, babbling greetings. Michael Douglas stared at him with some surprise, and as Gil joined the group the plump priest waved imperiously at the steward.

‘And here’s Alan Forrest to make you welcome, Maister Michael. Alan, bring Maister Douglas a stoup of ale, can you no see he’s thirsty?’

‘Alan can manage his duties without your advice, Sir David,’ Gil observed, as the maidservant behind the steward came forward with a tray with jug and beakers. ‘Good day to you, Michael.’

‘Good day to you, Maister Gil,’ said Michael warily in his deep voice. He accepted the ale the steward poured him with gratitude. ‘I’d no notion you were here. Madam your mother’s no ill?’ he added anxiously. ‘Or — or your sisters?’

‘No, no, Lady Egidia is well, Maister Michael,’ Fleming assured him, ‘and all the young ladies and all, by what Maister Cunningham tells me!’

‘It’s a wedding-visit,’ explained Gil, deliberately obtuse.

‘But what’s brought you out from Glasgow, Maister Michael?’ Fleming rushed on. ‘I hope it’s no bad news from Sir James?’

‘He sent Attie here to me,’ said Michael, nodding at the groom who was intent on his own beaker, ‘bade me ride out to the house about — about something, and I thought I’d call here on the way. Pay my respects to my godmother,’ he expanded. ‘And, well, anyone else that was here. Mistress Mason,’ he added, and bent the knee to Alys as she came to Gil’s side. ‘You’re looking well. Your good health.’ He raised the beaker and drank.